Something Worth Seeing: Gerda Taro, Kati Horna, and Photography as a Means for Change

A century after photography was invented, technological and stylistic developments led to the establishment of photojournalism, a fast-paced reportage of powerful images leading stories, and the growth of the illustrated press, which distributed photojournalists’ findings. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, it drew foreign photographers to the scene. Among them were Gerda Taro and Kati Horna, from Germany and Hungary respectively. These two photographers were interested in showing the human impact of war. Separately from each other, but to similar effect, both women contributed to a contemporary shift in the photographs which were visible to the world, the methods used to produce such photographs, and the ways they were distributed. Taro was one of the first photojournalists to diminish the distance between the camera and the action. Horna worked as a photographer, too, but she also worked behind the scenes as a graphic editor for illustrated publications, which were central to the widespread circulation of photographs. This thesis explores images from Gerda Taro and Kati Horna’s oeuvres, the contexts in which the public received them, and how both those images and those contexts reshaped people’s interpretations of the society and culture around them.